The Sears Tower. Great comedy. Deep dish pizza. The Cubbies. Chicago is known for a lot of things, but for a long time, theater wasn’t one of them. For years, the Second City was second – and dare we say third? – to theater Goliaths New York and London. But due to a stream of smash shows in recent years, Chi-town has proved itself more than capable of playing with the big kids.

August: Osage County, a dark comedy about three dysfunctional Midwestern sisters who move back to Oklahoma to console their mother after their father vanishes, premiered in 2007 at the Steppenwolf Theater in Old Town.

The show was written, directed and developed by Steppenwolf ensemble members. It went on to become a smash success on Broadway, garnering rave reviews –The New York Times called it “the most exciting new American play Broadway has seen in years” — and won numerous Tony Awards, including Best Play. Director and Northwestern theatre professor Anna Shapiro won the Tony for Best Direction of a Play and playwright Tracy Letts won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for drama.

After its successful run in New York, August: Osage County is set to cross the pond later this month when it premieres at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton Theatre in London.

Shows like August have helped to cement Chicago’s reputation as a theater capital over the past few years. While Chicago has long been known as a national theater center, it is finally starting to earn the respect – and international attention – it deserves. From the amount of new talent that floods the city each year to the edgy, controversial work that goes up, Chi-town audiences have the opportunity to see work that receives international recognition, but in a more small-community setting and for relatively low prices.

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company, one of Chicago’s largest and most well-known theaters, is one of the many companies that helped put Chicago on the map. Throughout its 34-year history the Steppenwolf has proved to be a launch pad for plays, both new and old, before they move on to other theater capitals like New York and London.

“Chicago, pound for pound, is certainly on par with the two cities, in terms of both the quality of work and variety of work,” says Ed Sobel, the Steppenwolf’s director of new play development and a Northwestern alum.

“We have, over time, built an audience that not only tolerates [riskiness] but expects that,” Sobel says. “August is particularly unique. The fact that it’s on Broadway at all is kind of astonishing – there were a lot of forces going against it, including that it’s a 3 ½ hour play, but producers came to Chicago, and they were convinced that work of such a high level deserves to be seen outside of Chicago.”

Goodman Theatre associate producer Steve Scott echoes this sentiment. “I think what’s unique about Chicago is that the work that we do here is not necessarily intended to be commercially successful,” he says. “[In New York] shows are produced to make money. The creators of the shows feel strongly about the artistic quality, but there’s always an eye toward commercial success.”

The Steppenwolf is by no means the only theater in Chicago that is producing groundbreaking work. The Goodman Theatre, Chicago’s oldest and largest nonprofit ensemble, performed shows such as Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which both later went on to enjoy Tony Award-winning New York runs. “In terms of the national theater, the Goodman has become, especially in the last 10 or 15 years, very well known for the quality of work, even internationally,” Scott says.

More recently, the Goodman was the site for the Chicago premiere of Radio Golf, the story of a man who tries to launch a real estate venture in the hopes of becoming the city’s first black mayor. The show premiered at the Goodman in early 2007 and was the final play in Pulitzer Prize-winning writer August Wilson’s ten-play cycle chronicling the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The Goodman was the first theater to put on all ten shows. In April 2007 Radio Golf, too, went on to Broadway, where it enjoyed a brief but well received two-month run.

“We’re all here to support the work on staff, so I think the Goodman is seen as a place to do shows. Word gets around if a theater is or isn’t a good place to work,” Scott says.

Actor Brian Dennehy is a frequent collaborator at the Goodman (he was part of the aforementioned Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey into Night). Dennehy’s next venture with the Goodman begins in January 2009, when he stars in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms opposite Entourage actress Carla Gugino.

A-listers aren’t the only ones getting prime space on the theater marquees across Chicago’s theater district. Unlike New York and London, where audiences often shell out hundreds of dollars to see a show, whose producers rely heavily on big-names in leading roles to sell their shows, “we really try to find the best artists available. If the work is of high-quality, then you solve a number of problems,” Scott says.

Part of the reason for this influx of new talent is due to the fact that Chicago is a more affordable city than New York or London, making it an ideal place for artists on the lower end of the pay scale, Sobel says.

The variety of theater work available to recent graduates is another factor that sets Chicago apart and helps to attract new talent. In New York, aspiring thespians either work under the showcase code, or on Broadway or off-Broadway, and there are very few steps in between, Sobel says. “In Chicago you have everything from non-equity*, non-union to small theaters that are union affiliated, to mid-size theaters. So there’s a real possibility you can start working lower end of the spectrum and move through the steps along the way.” (*Non-unionized actors)

Arts Alliance secretary and Communication junior Kara Weisenstein agrees. “If New York or L.A. is too big of a change, Chicago is a great place for younger people. There’s a lot of non-equity work, but there’s tons of professional theater, like at Steppenwolf and Goodman,” she says. “Many students that aren’t ready to go to New York stay in Chicago. Northwestern is such a great theater school; it really ups the ante,” she says.

Much of Chicago’s new talent originates at Northwestern or at other local schools, Weisenstein says. “The fact that Northwestern is in Chicago really influences the Chicago theater scene because of our proximity,” she says. “There are so many people who work professionally outside of school.”

Northwestern’s influence on the theater community in Chicago and the rest of the country is nothing new. The Lookingglass Theatre Company, for example, got its start on Northwestern’s campus in the late 1980s thanks to a group of theater students, including current Lookingglass artistic director David Catlin and actor David Schwimmer. It is now a major theater company that boasts a budget close to $4 million.

“We couldn’t afford to commission a playwright or necessarily pay royalties, but coming out of Northwestern we have this great tradition of adapting work. We thought we could adapt works of literature that were ancient or lapsed into the public domain, and also on the idealistic side, we do love the story,” Catlin says about how the Lookingglass eventually came to be.

As for theatergoers, the relative low cost of going to the theater in Chicago, as opposed to many productions in New York, allows audiences greater access to different kinds of work and become a more sophisticated and educated audience over time.

Some of Chicago’s theaters have nonprofit statuses or are subsidized by local government as opposed to commercial producers in New York who need to make a profit and, as a result, often shy away from tackling more controversial issues. Chicago is becoming more and more well-known for groundbreaking work outside the confines of traditional theater.

“A lot of physical theater companies are coming here that’s helping redefine theater in Chicago,” says Catlin. “There are new kinds of theater styles being seen here – adaptation of literature, live rock ‘n roll music, and incorporation of hip-hop.”